


A Drink Between Friends

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Future Fic, Gen, Implied Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 02:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11476893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Hooked Queen friendship. Part of the “What Comes Next” universe, but you can read this as a standalone. No spoilers for s7.





	A Drink Between Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Hooked Queen friendship. Part of the “What Comes Next” universe, but you can read this as a standalone. No spoilers for s7.

He opened the door to find Regina standing on his porch.

“Henry’s on a date,” Killian said, drying his hand off on a dishtowel he had thrown across one shoulder. “I think he said they were going to the movies, so if he’s not answering his phone—”

“I know he’s on a date, I came to see Emma,” Regina said, adjusting her purse strap on her arm. She was dressed in one of her severe business suits, heels elevating her several inches above her actual height. “I thought she might want to go get a drink.”

“She’s working late; she’s still at the sheriff’s station,” he supplied. They stared at each other for a long moment before he stood back and held the door wider. “You’re welcome to come in.”

Regina’s eyebrows went up. “We don’t really do that, you and I.”

Killian frowned. “Don’t do what?”

“Spend time together. As friends,” Regina replied. “I mean, we do, but in a large group that includes your wife and the Charmings and… We don’t ‘hang out’ together.” He could hear the air quotes around ‘hang out’, because Regina Mills didn’t use modern slang without air quotes.

Killian huffed out a breath. “Do you want to come in for a drink or not?”

“Fine,” Regina muttered, stepping over the threshold and setting her purse on the table in the foyer. “I don’t drink rum, you know.”

“I know,” he said, pulling a bottle of whiskey down from a cabinet. “Ice?”

She looked at the bottle, presumably to judge the quality of his liquor, and then shook her head. “No ice.” He poured the whiskey into a short crystal tumbler and handed it over. “Thank you,” Regina said with a quick nod of her head. 

Killian picked up his trusty bottle of rum (although these days he drank from it relatively infrequently, compared to the past) and poured himself a drink to match Regina’s, gesturing for her to join him in sitting at the kitchen table.

“I figured you’d be out with that band of hooligans on your boat,” she said, her posture stiff.

“The Lost Boys aren’t hooligans, and more than half my sailing class is teenage girls from the high school now anyway,” he said, slumping back in his seat.

“I bet it is,” Regina said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you’re their bad boy fantasy come to life.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll have you know, most of those girls are becoming excellent sailors. They aren’t there for an old, married pirate who wears a sheriff’s deputy badge, my dashing good looks aside.”

Regina rolled her eyes and sipped her drink, choosing not to respond to that statement. “I hope Emma’s not working too hard.”

“She’s not, surprisingly. She took the day off yesterday, so she’s just catching up on some paperwork this evening.”

Silence settled over them. After a minute, Regina said, “If we aren’t going to have any terrible threats to Storybrooke to discuss, then we’re going to have to learn to make small talk.”

Killian sighed. “Watch any good television shows lately?”

One of her eyebrows arched. “I don’t like television.”

“Nor me.” He slapped his hand on the table. “Look at that, something else we have in common besides Emma and our dark pasts. We don’t like television.”

Regina laughed, rolling her glass between her hands and looking down at the table. “How much do you think about the old days?” she asked him.

“Which old days? I have quite a lot of them, love.”

Her lips quirked up in a half smile. “Any of the ones when you were a villain.”

“Why do you ask?”

Regina huffed in frustration. “Just humor me.”

He swallowed a measure of rum, enjoying the sensation of it warming his chest. “Every day.”

“Me too,” Regina said softly.

Killian looked up, surprised that she would admit something like that to him. “Really?”

Taking a drink as if bolstering her courage, she nodded. “Sometimes I wonder if the guilt will ever entirely go away.”

“Should it?”

“Perhaps not.” She took a sip of her drink. “Although I think there’s something to be said for truly forgiving oneself.”

“And is that what you’ve done? Forgiven yourself?” Killian asked.

Regina stiffened up again. “That’s a rather personal question.”

“You started us down this road, love.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Humor me.”

Her eyes skittered away, as if she was looking for an escape from the conversation. Finally she sighed. “On some level, I have. In that I’m not letting guilt keep me up at night so much anymore. I’m allowing myself to be happy. But in other ways, no. I’m still striving to make amends to the people I’ve wronged. And I won’t ever let myself forget,” she said.

Killian swirled the rum in his glass, watching the way the overhead light reflected in the liquid. “We’re very much alike, you and I.”

“I know, I told Emma that when we were down in the Underworld rescuing your sorry ass.” She tapped a fingernail against her glass. “It’s why we don’t get along.”

“We get along fine, Regina.”

“It’s why we maintain this distance between us, despite the fact that we’re part of the same family. We don’t like seeing our worst qualities mirrored in the other person.”

He nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Of course it’s true.”

“Do you ever wonder if you could have followed a different path, in spite of all the things that were pushing you toward darkness?” he asked. “There’s goodness in you, clearly, so do you wonder if you could have chosen to be good?”

“And never become the Evil Queen?”

“Exactly.”

“I doubt it. Hatred metastasizes like a cancer, I’ve decided. Self-hatred, hatred of others, it all grows and multiplies inside you until there’s no room for anything else but that.”

“Aye.” He remembered it, a seemingly endless line of days when he woke up with anger tightening like an iron band around his chest, a list of those who had wronged him, enslaved him, taken his brother, taken his love, taken his hand echoing over and over in his mind like a mantra. And under it, the absolute certainty that if he had been a better person, he wouldn’t have lost everything he ever cared about. “Sometimes it seems like I was a different person then, and other times…”

“Take it from one who knows: you weren’t a different person. The dark parts are baked in, and you can’t separate them. They’re a part of you.”

He snorted, and started to raise his glass to finish off his rum, already thinking of pouring himself another. Instead he set the glass down and took his hand off of it. “I do enjoy your pep talks, Regina.”

“I’m not saying that I don’t think you’re a good person, obviously. You’re helping to raise my son and are married to one of my closest friends. I’m just saying, people like us, we have to be…”

“Vigilant?”

“Yes.” She thought about it. “Disciplined.”

He pondered that, the way he inspected every small choice he made for evidence that he was slipping toward darkness. Every action he took at work, every time he raised his voice to Henry, every gluttonous or greedy impulse on his part was picked apart and dissected in his mind in the wee hours of the morning.

“I realized at one point that a part of me was angry with David for forgiving me,” he said, finally giving in and draining his glass. “I wanted him to punish me for what I did to his father all those years ago.”

“That’s not really in Charming’s nature,” she said with a sardonic smile.

“He just… _forgave_ me, and not only that, he welcomed me into his family, and at first I was so incredibly grateful.” He swallowed around a lump in his throat.

“So what happened?”

He shrugged. “I started to feel that I owed him this huge debt that I can never repay.”

“And you expected Charming to send you the bill? It doesn’t work like that, Killian. Good people forgive us because it’s in their nature, and maybe because we did a little bit to earn it, and it’s up to us to continue to earn it as time goes on. By being who they expect us to be. Who they see us as. Who _we_ want to be.”

He smirked. “Heroes?”

“Yes, heroes.”


End file.
